I know I haven't been good updating (again) but you have to admit I was doing really well there for a while!
For those of you who are missing Juiliana updates, just take solace in the thought that instead of working on the blog, I've been working on graduating =)
If you're interested next time you see me, I can maybe show you my "storyboards" I've made for the path to graduation. Basically they're an outline of the results sections of the three papers (plus a review article) that I need to write to graduate.
Hopefully when I present them to the two advisors they'll be like "YES Mike, looks great! No more experiments just write!"
Haha right, as if that's likely, but it's a good hope!
I'll update a picture once I sync the digital camera at home.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Too Smart...
Here's a video I tried to take of Juliana. You see, she's too smart for the camera. I think she gets it partly from her Grandma H! If no one is looking, she'll scoot across the floor with superb crawling technique. Then, if someone is watching, (or especially videotaping) she'll just sit there and smile or army crawl instead of proper crawl!
In this video, I was using the dog bowl as bait. Man she loves to crawl across the floor to the dog food or water bowls! The first few seconds you can see her funny "straight arm crawl technique." But then kelvin decided to lay down in her path, and you see right at 30 seconds in what that turns into (hilarious! watch the dog!)
In all, its some pretty shaky camera work by me because I have to hide across the room and zoom in so she doesn't see me recording. That way she'll actually crawl a little bit before just smiling at the camera!
In this video, I was using the dog bowl as bait. Man she loves to crawl across the floor to the dog food or water bowls! The first few seconds you can see her funny "straight arm crawl technique." But then kelvin decided to lay down in her path, and you see right at 30 seconds in what that turns into (hilarious! watch the dog!)
In all, its some pretty shaky camera work by me because I have to hide across the room and zoom in so she doesn't see me recording. That way she'll actually crawl a little bit before just smiling at the camera!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Dealers...Blah
Okay so after the disappointing day at M&T bank stadium (where interestingly I saw not only Irv from the band, but also Steve P and Seth F from undergrad! That was so cool! I hope we can get together somehow/someway), I left early and tina, the baby, and I drove around looking at different types of 7passenger vehicles comparing them (because we DONT' want a minivan). We spent the afternoon driving around Ritchie highway and visiting a bunch of dealers to sit in cars. Anyway, we were having a decent time, visited a Honda dealer, really liked sitting in the Pilot, but then drove it and were like NO WAY! Well then we went to the toyota dealer and oh my gosh that was a horrible experience! More about that later!
Anyway, we sat in a 3 row RAV4 and it felt really awesome in the front seat and size wize, but when we sat in the second and third rows, WOA way too small even for toddlers! Then we started looking at the highlander and it was pretty good but then we had some problems so we left without making a decision on it and not even seeing the sienna. We did notice that the center seat in the second row (though a cool removable idea) seemed kind of cheaply made.
We moved on to GMC and sat in an Acadia, and liked it, though we didn't have time to test drive it. We also went to Saturn and saw the Outlook quickly, same basic build as the Acadia and liked it but didn't have a lot of time to compare it or certainly not to drive it.
We stopped by a Mazda dealer which was closed and really liked the shape of the CX9 from the outside. We'll have to stop by to get a brochure, sit in one, and maybe drive it and stop back by GMC and Saturn.
It's kind of funny b/c the CX9 and Tribecca seem like sister vehicles and the Acadia and Outlook are basically the same vehicle. So we picked kind of two vehicles that we like! I didn't like the floor matting in the Acadia, and who knows maybe when we drive it it'll be like the Pilot and a sudden "no"! It certainly is a larger vehicle than the Forester now. At least the CX9 and Tribecca seem closer in body size.
In all the really frustrating part is the gas mileage! I mean they all get about 16/21 +/- 1 or 2 mpg! That's horrible!
Anyway, the whole point wasn't to BUY a car. We aren't someone who just walks in and says "I'm buying a car today." (haha unless we just totaled one!) So instead we visit places, do research, sit in cars see if we feel comfortable in them and sit and think about it for a while. We aren't going to buy any time soon, but rather whenever I graduate. I probably won't want to drive the Jeep as a daily driver so we'll get tina a new/used 7 passenger like she's always wanted and I'll drive the Forester. What's wrong with that? Researching ahead of time about cars that will be used when we are ready to buy? Well, apparently the toyota dealer didn't like that! I'll post a letter Tina and I are writing later.
On a positive note, I did get to see the subaru leather and it does seem pretty quality and might not get ruined by kelvin's claws! I'll have to bring him in and see if he rips/scratches it though before I even consider buying one! That's something we'll have to compare when we make some more decisions...quality of cloth and leather in each brand of vehicle! We are very hard on our vehicles. We don't care about silly built in entertainment modules but we do care about how quality the seats are and if they'll last the hundreds of thousands of miles we put on cars!
Here's a baby picture!
She says "find me a safe car that I can beg to drive!"
Anyway, we sat in a 3 row RAV4 and it felt really awesome in the front seat and size wize, but when we sat in the second and third rows, WOA way too small even for toddlers! Then we started looking at the highlander and it was pretty good but then we had some problems so we left without making a decision on it and not even seeing the sienna. We did notice that the center seat in the second row (though a cool removable idea) seemed kind of cheaply made.
We moved on to GMC and sat in an Acadia, and liked it, though we didn't have time to test drive it. We also went to Saturn and saw the Outlook quickly, same basic build as the Acadia and liked it but didn't have a lot of time to compare it or certainly not to drive it.
We stopped by a Mazda dealer which was closed and really liked the shape of the CX9 from the outside. We'll have to stop by to get a brochure, sit in one, and maybe drive it and stop back by GMC and Saturn.
It's kind of funny b/c the CX9 and Tribecca seem like sister vehicles and the Acadia and Outlook are basically the same vehicle. So we picked kind of two vehicles that we like! I didn't like the floor matting in the Acadia, and who knows maybe when we drive it it'll be like the Pilot and a sudden "no"! It certainly is a larger vehicle than the Forester now. At least the CX9 and Tribecca seem closer in body size.
In all the really frustrating part is the gas mileage! I mean they all get about 16/21 +/- 1 or 2 mpg! That's horrible!
Anyway, the whole point wasn't to BUY a car. We aren't someone who just walks in and says "I'm buying a car today." (haha unless we just totaled one!) So instead we visit places, do research, sit in cars see if we feel comfortable in them and sit and think about it for a while. We aren't going to buy any time soon, but rather whenever I graduate. I probably won't want to drive the Jeep as a daily driver so we'll get tina a new/used 7 passenger like she's always wanted and I'll drive the Forester. What's wrong with that? Researching ahead of time about cars that will be used when we are ready to buy? Well, apparently the toyota dealer didn't like that! I'll post a letter Tina and I are writing later.
On a positive note, I did get to see the subaru leather and it does seem pretty quality and might not get ruined by kelvin's claws! I'll have to bring him in and see if he rips/scratches it though before I even consider buying one! That's something we'll have to compare when we make some more decisions...quality of cloth and leather in each brand of vehicle! We are very hard on our vehicles. We don't care about silly built in entertainment modules but we do care about how quality the seats are and if they'll last the hundreds of thousands of miles we put on cars!
Here's a baby picture!
She says "find me a safe car that I can beg to drive!"
House Prices
Home prices...oye! Well, figures things are going bad there, too. I think the way prices are going in our area, whenever I do graduate and move, be it whenever in the future, we're going to be hard pressed to make the money I was hoping for. We'll probably be lucky to break even after paying the realtor fees. I was hoping so much that we'd get money out of this house for a downpayment, but I have a feeling we might not. Ah well we'll have to see whenever that comes around! Hopefully we'll need to be here long enough that home prices swing up considerably. I just hope whatever my job options are it works with the house!
Can we live here while we're trying to sell the house? hehe
Can we live here while we're trying to sell the house? hehe
Experiments
So what else is going on...Ah work, it figures things like on friday happen in my luck! Both advisors agreed that if the experiment I did on friday didn't work, I should stop with the series of experiments as a proof of concept that I've been working on for weeks and put the experiment to bed. Well figures it worked just enough that I needed to keep doing them but not enough to be a positive final result!
She says "Daddy can you graduate so I can get my own cell phone?"
She says "Daddy can you graduate so I can get my own cell phone?"
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